The primary standards for communications with semiconductor manufacturing machines come from the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) and are titled "SEMI Equipment Communications Standard Part I" (SECS-I) and "SEMI Equipment Communications Standard Part II" (SECS-II). SECS-I is a layered protocol between factory equipment interface servers and host computers. SECS-II defines the details of the interpretation of messages exchanged between intelligent equipment and a host.
Requiring that equipment vendors comply with the SEMI standards is a good first step in implementing CIM Equipment Integration (EI). However, different types of manufacturing equipment have different requirements. Different vendors of similar equipment may likewise make different facilities available. The result is that much of the critical SECS-II communications host code has to be rewritten for each different type of equipment from each different manufacturer.
Current practice has been to develop EI system components targeted at specific equipment in specific CIM environments. Code reuse is achieved only in the form of code templates that are used as the starting point for customization. The output of this process is vulnerable to changes in the CIM system requirements or equipment interface specifications often requiring time-consuming rework.
A recent SEMATECH Equipment Interface Development (EID) project monthly report cited the average development time for a single component of many to be approximately 130-220 man-hours. This development time can be reduced to 45 man-hours using a combination of code templates and the SEMATECH proposed Automated Equipment Interface (AEI) SECS message set. Reducing time-to-market and cycle time require that this development time be further reduced.